Or a cashier reciting my name after reading it off a prompter. Safeway has been doing that for years and I don't feel a personal connection just because they're tracking my every move and making me well aware of it on a daily basis.
Is there some sort of new Silicon Valley math I wasn't informed of?
That would not be a 20% lift on number of visits by the customer, but it could be a 20% lift on revenue or margin from that customer.
That said, the notion that there's a technology or technique that can sustainably triple repeat store visits on a widespread basis for small and mid-sized services businesses is absurd. If you could do this, you would not be raising $26 million from VCs.
Obviously, it's most likely that the author of this post simply didn't understand what he was writing. Or that I'm not hip to the New Math of the New New Economy.
Fivestars looks like a modern take on the punch card loyalty program. A 20% sales lift for those customers who opt to participate in a loyalty program (which is usually a small minority of total customers) is quite possible. A 200% sales lift would be unheard of, as would a tripling of repeat store visits.
